NASA’s proposed 2007 budget would shrink the space shuttle program more than planned and speed development of a spacecraft destined to make the first journeys to the moon since the Apollo program ended in the 1970s.
President Bush’s $16.79 billion budget request for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would reduce spending for the shuttle program to $4.06 billion in fiscal year 2007 from $4.78 billion this year.
The 2007 figure for the shuttle is about $165 million less than NASA projected a year ago.
The program that includes the planned crew exploration vehicle, the first new manned U.S. spacecraft in three decades, would get $3.05 billion in 2007, almost double the estimate of a year ago. Lockheed Martin Corp.’s Jefferson County-based team is competing against a team led by Northrop Grumman Corp. for the vehicle’s contract.
“We’re very pleased to see that the president’s 2007 fiscal year budget will enable NASA to continue to move forward with the vision for space exploration,” said Joan Underwood, a spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin, referring to Bush’s space strategy laid out in 2004.
However, critics accused the agency of shifting funding from scientific research to the shuttles.
“It means that the vision for space exploration will be defeated,” said Louis Friedman, executive director of the Pasadena, Calif.-based Planetary Society. “We will remain in Earth orbit paying lots of money for tasks that frankly aren’t worth the costs and risks.”
Bush’s request for the world’s biggest space agency provides money for the shuttles “to combat flight hardware obsolescence, maintain ground systems and facilities, and to initiate actions for an orderly phase-out of the program by 2010,” according to documents issued today.
NASA’s overall spending would rise about 3.2 percent – when fiscal 2006 funds for hurricane damage are subtracted – as development of the crew exploration vehicle begins to accelerate.
“NASA simply cannot afford everything that our many constituents want us to do,” Administrator Michael Griffin told reporters in Washington. “We must set priorities.”
The spending plan includes money for a shuttle mission to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, the Earth-orbiting observatory responsible for the deepest views of the universe.
Meanwhile, the agency is moving up its timetable for completion of the new spacecraft, intended to carry crews and cargo to the space station and astronauts to the moon and possibly Mars.
NASA asked potential contractors last month to have designs ready for testing by November 2008, with the first flight coming as soon as September 2012. The original target was 2014.
Seventeen space shuttle missions are planned through 2010, 16 for assembly of the international space station and one for servicing the Hubble. Griffin said the agency was planning for as many as 28 trips a year ago.
Denver Post staff writer Andy Vuong contributed to this report.
